Effects of Body Armor Fit on Warfighter Mobility as Measured by Range of Motion (ROM)

Abstract

This study focuses on the effect of body armor fit on Warfighter mobility as measured by range of motion. Forty male active duty military personnel participated in the study with four different body armor configurations: Baseline, Initial Fit, Increased and Decreased sizes. The results indicated that the degradations in the Decreased and Initial Fit sizes were always statistically equivalent to each other, however, mobility in the Increased size were further degraded; 5° for the extension and rotation movements on average and up to 1 inch for flexion and reach. More importantly, across all the movements while wearing an Increased size further degraded mobility by 2.4% on average relative to the Decreased or Initial fit size. Therefore, when evaluated by ROM measurements, there was no benefit to wearing a smaller body armor size to improve mobility relative to the Initial Fit size, but there was a penalty wearing an Increased size.